Long-term confidence falls in packaging industry – CMCI

LONDON (ICIS)–Short-term indicators in the European packaging market were higher whilst long-term confidence dropped, according to ICIS Chemical Market Confidence Index (CMCI) data on Thursday.

Expectations for business conditions and profitability also fell into negative territory overall, although order book expectations remained in positive territory.

This makes the packaging CMCI similar to the overall index, which also showed optimism for the next six months falling.

The decrease in confidence may reflect a reversion to the normal view of the market following a very bullish December.

The fall in confidence and uncertain outlook for plastics markets may also have contributed to the weaker outlook for packaging.

(*Forward-looking data for December was for next 12 months, while from January onwards, forward-looking sentiment will be based on the next six months)

The newly established ICIS Europe CMCI aggregates sentiment from hundreds of petrochemical market players actively involved in price negotiations across more than 60 different markets.

The Europe CMCI runs from +100, to -100, with zero on each index representing neutral, or uncertain conditions, a negative score indicating bearish expectations and a positive score representing bullish expectations. The indices also gather sentiment on the comparison between the current situation and the situation across the past 12 months to give a complete picture of current market conditions and confidence. The information is gathered in the third week of each month.  A full methodology is available on request.

For more details on the overall Europe CMCI data, click here